How Does Your Club Use Social Media? VOTE IN THE POLL

[Bush Walker]

Davidmorr in "Is your Club Size Diminishing and your Membership Ageing?" has noted that we are struggling to find examples of the use of social media by bushwalking Clubs. I hope that this poll and thread will give all of us some inspiration and allow us to learn from others successes.

The successful use of social media could create a web presence, be a marketing and recruitment tool and possibly create a feeling of community. Some Clubs are using private forums/bulletin boards/noticeboards but these are only available to members and hence can't have a role in the recruitment of new members, but can contribute significantly to a feeling of community.

Popular Social Media websites include:

Blogger, WordPress: blogs for text sharing and commenting
Forums: such as Bushwalk Australia
Twitter: microblogs used for short text messages
Facebook: photo and personal news sharing
Flickr: photo and video sharing
YouTube: a video sharing
digg: social news
StumbleUpon: social news
Reddit: social news
MeetUp: meeting organiser
Delicious: a social bookmarking

Does your Club participate in any of these social media websites? ******PLEASE VOTE IN THE ATTACHED POLL***** NB A NO vote is just as important as a YES vote

Let us know if we have omitted any social media your Club uses.

Tell us how your Club uses any you have selected in the poll.

PS Many members of this forum have just started using a range of these media to promote their blogs, so do a search for "bushwalking" on the above websites to find examples of early attempts to master these web 2.0 tools.


A selection of Bushwalking Clubs/Groups with Facebook pages -

Bushwalk Australia
Tasmanian University Bushwalking Club
Indonesian Bushwalking Club (IBC)
Pandani Bushwalking Club
Walkie Talkie Bushwalking Group
Bundaberg Bushwalking Club
Wild Ones Bushwalking Club
STICKS- Old Res Bushwalking Club
Blue Mountains Bushwalking Men
Jewish Women's Bushwalking Club
YHA Bushwalking
Oxfam Bushwalking Inc.
Bushwalking & Adventure

PS I didn't get to the end of the list of bushwalking groups, so if I missed you please give us a link to your Facebook page.

Some Facebook usage stats for Australia (December 2011)

By Age

<18 13% 1,374,180
18-25 28% 2,967,260
26-35 25% 2,637,540
36-45 16% 1,710,280
>45 18% 1,966,580

By sex

Female 54% 5,592,260

By Interest

Interested in hiking as shown on their Facebook page 110,740, with 75,580 between18-45 years.

Source: Social Stats iPhone app

[Bush Walker]

Interesting paper discussing the use of social media in sporting clubs for download as pdf:

COMMUNICATION Using Social Media in Sporting Clubs

RISKS AND BENEFITS
MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION TOOLS
COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY TEMPLATE

(Government of Western Australia Department of Sport and Recreation)

[Bush Walker]

From the Rotarians on Social Networks Fellowship blog

Pages vs Profiles

10:25 am in News by Mel Powell

Rotary International and the Rotarians on Social Networks Fellowship encourages the use of social media networks to foster fellowship in furtherance of the service Rotarians provide locally and worldwide.

Currently the most-used social media network is Facebook. Within the world of Rotary, thousands of friendships and many service projects have grown and flourished. However, in the use of Facebook, we have found an issue to address, in order to help Rotary, Rotaract, and Interact Clubs, and Rotary Districts, maximize the benefits of using Facebook.

We strongly advocate that a Club or District establish their public presence on Facebook as a “Page“, and should you choose to create a private internal discussion hub, that would be a “Group“.

If you have established your Club or District as a “person” with a profile, we recommend that you switch to a Page as soon as possible.

We recommend this for two reasons:

While there is a limit to how many Facebook “friends” someone may have, there is no current limit on how many Facebook users, inside and outside of Rotary, can “like” your Page. As a matter of public image and as a matter of membership growth, a Page is the best alternative. A “person” on Facebook must be a real person. To establish a Rotary Club as a “person” on Facebook with a “profile” is a violation of Facebook’s terms of service. While it is up to Facebook whether or not to enforce their own provisions, Rotary International and ROSNF are concerned that Facebook will decide to enforce their rules. They could close down the accounts of Rotary Clubs who have established their presences on Facebook as a “person”, and those Clubs will lose their photos and information and have to start over without the ease of transferring the materials within Facebook.

In summary, Rotary International and Rotarians on Social Networks Fellowship continue to encourage Rotarians and Clubs to use social networks to advance the Object of Rotary, and we strongly suggest that on Facebook in particular we exercise care not to violate that company’s terms of service and establish a Club or a District as a Page and not a “person”.

Some good advice for bushwalking Clubs thinking of setting up a Facebook page.

[tasadam]

Also,
Launceston walking club

[Bush Walker]

Please tell us first which of the social media in the poll you are using and how your Club uses it?

Assuming your Club is using at least one of the social media listed in the poll, do you think it attracts new members?

Hardly a bushwalking Club but the problems are similar.

Monks Embrace Web to Reach Recruits

Visit theirFacebook page

[Bush Walker]

So far there has been little response to the poll, which I was hoping would give us some ideas to try in our own Clubs.

1. Does this mean that Clubs are not using social media?

If this is the case please check the NONE box, so we have a clear picture of the situation.

2. Does it mean that you are simply unimpressed by social media?

Perhaps you have tried them and find them an invasion of your privacy, as I do. Well, if you have the time, most of the social media applications have privacy options which can make them quite safe and as a further precaution, like me, you can use a secondary email address to register. Getting a Google mail address is easy. Unfortunately/fortunately depending on your perspective, social media applications are here to stay and you are going to have to learn to live with them. Your friends, parents, children and grandchildren, travel sites, many Clubs and companies and even potential employers are all using social media.

3. Perhaps you have already made your contribution to the thread, Is your Club Size Diminishing and your Membership Ageing?and are bored by the topic.

If this is the case, thanks for your contribution and I understand that not everyone has my optimism for the potential of social media to engage a new generation of Club members

[jez_au]

So far there has been little response to the poll...

Does this mean...

Go easy, I cant help but think it is Christmas and holiday time.

For the Friends of the Heysen Trail we use forums, Facebook (a page and a private group), Twitter. Facebook works ok, really only used this year. Twitter is only the last couple of months, it's not hiking season so too early to really comment. I think Twitter is a bit about going to where some people are having conversations. The website remains the primary online portal bringing people in.

(The club is two-fold though, one part is a bushwalking club, the other part about promoting and maintaining the Heysen Trail.)

[Bush Walker]

Go easy, I cant help but think it is Christmas and holiday time.

Thanks jez_au for the detailed information about Friends of the Heysen Trail and the reassurance that I am being too impatient (again!) in expecting too much. I guess I have been spoilt by the fantastic response to the other thread.

Its good to see a Club trying out some of the many possibilities.

[Lotsafreshair]

http://www.facebook.com/SydneyBushWalkers
Here's the SBW Facebook page. Our main focus is our website, whereas Facebook, Twitter @SydBushWalkers (we have an account but am still working up strategy for its use, so fairly dormant at present), Meetup are simply channels to direct people to the website.

Our involvement in forums is purely by individual members of our club here in bushwalk.com. We don't have a discussion forum of our own, in some sense, this is one of our uses of Facebook. However, when Bushwalk.com is so good - why go to the trouble of setting up our own? We use Google Groups for group communication, however, we are currently revising this to a new system.

[Bush Walker]

Thanks Lotsafreshair.

[Bush Walker]

Meetup are simply channels to direct people to the website. Our involvement in forums is purely by individual members of our club here in bushwalk.com. We don't have a discussion forum of our own, in some sense, this is one of our uses of Facebook. However, when Bushwalk.com is so good - why go to the trouble of setting up our own? We use Google Groups for group communication, however, we are currently revising this to a new system.

Twitter @SydBushWalkers should be great for sending out reminders of meeting , events, walks, cancellations etc

Meetup should allow potential new members to put a young face to a name, which should be more effective

Nik has offered private forums on Bushwalk Australia for Clubs, perhaps SBW could take up his offer

Google groups is great for collaborative tasks but a lot of people are using Dropbox for exchange of docs.

[davidmorr]

You should probably add Google+ to your list.

And the original social media format was a mailing list, whether run on your own server or through something like the groups function run by Yahoo, Google and many others.

[Bush Walker]

You should probably add Google+ to your list.

Yes it is the new boy on the scene. Pity, but as you know you can't add to a poll once it has started.

[Bush Walker]

Thanks photohiker, davidmorr, pancake, liamy77, Ent and others ( transferred from the thread Clubs: Good bad and ugly)

I have asked before, but can you give some examples of community organisations (not necessarily bushwalking clubs) that have been revived by using social media? And was social media the only thing they did, or were there other changes at the same time?

I would love to give you the answers but I don't have them. If I did I wouldn't be asking so many questions and trying to find a solution.

My experience several years ago with many community/service organisations in the Adelaide Hills was that they were all dropping in numbers and that like most bushwalking clubs they had a large number of members in the 50-65 year age group, with many in the 70's.

I am not sure that bushwalking clubs are experiencing the same problems as the very limited poll on the thread suggested that more clubs are stable or increasing rather than decreasing, but, as several have pointed out, the validity of this data is very questionable. The stability/increase is probably due to a larger number of new members over 40, and few under 40, but I don't have any evidence to support this.

I am not able to give any examples of organisations that were using social media as none of them were at the time. My intuitive feeling is that social media should develop a sense of community and hence should help with the recruitment and retention problem. It is also known that those younger than 48 ( Gen X and Y) have a high use of social networking hence my belief that by using social media tools, Clubs might attract younger members and even older.

Some successful examples outside of the bushwalking sphere are:

Monks Embrace Web to Reach Recruits and you can visit their Facebook page
Country Womens Association (CWA)

My questions have been directed at trying to finds bushwalking clubs that have been using social media and one of my threads lists a dozen or so, I have found. I don't know whether they have been "successful" as a result of using eg Facebook pages. Without membership data and trends, I can't tell. Only the SBW club have responded with enough information for me to think that it has helped them. Social media look very promising to me as a way of engaging potential new (younger?) members and for this reason I think all clubs should give them a go. I know that when I "tweet" or post to my Facebook "wall" the number of visits to my blog can double.

These threads (see below) have been a one way process only because I lack any additional input to contribute other than what you have also received, not because I don't want to share my experiences. I would love to be able to tell you how to use social media to recruit more members! I hope my contributions to this forum has got you thinking about the possible role of social media in your Club

How Does Your Club Use Social Media? [12/279]
Does your Club need more Gen X & Gen Y members? [31/556]
Is your Club Size Diminishing and your Membership Ageing? [191/2849] POLL
Bushwalking Clubs: the good, bad and the ugly [23/488]

The problem with suggesting that the potential for Clubs to disappear will never occur due to replacement of the 45-64 age group with others as they get older, is that it is well known that the "baby boomers" are a population bulge that followed after the war and that younger generations are much smaller. It is also known that those under 45 (Gen X & Y) have different views about club membership, so when they reach 45, it is unlikely they will replace the current 45-64 year olds in sufficient numbers to maintain club membership numbers at current levels.

[Bush Walker]

There is a new thread to help us get some more information about Forum members and perhaps put our discussions in context.

POLL: Your Age Range and Years of Club Membership.

You don't need to give your exact age and can vote anonymously, so give it a go!

[Redtail]

Our group was created using social media, specifically Meetup.

I'd had a loose email list of like-minded friends, and friends-of-friends, and so on that enjoyed bushwalking in a group. For various reasons, they didn't get around to organising walks, and that being my "thing", I would, and email them. It all got unmanageable and too hard to keep track of info and respondents, so I took it to meetup and never looked back.

I was also looking to expand beyond my scope of friends. Having been involved with a rather large environmental group, on the committee and organising extended walks, I'd had enough of the accompanying BS, along with the opinions and attitudes of the members themselves. So, on to meetup, a bit of a blurb on what we're about, listed with themes to deter the "undesirables" and we've got 85 members to date. Self-managing, auto-reminders, RSVP lists - fantastic!

I did encounter some resistance from some friends who thought they were being herded into an anonymous site. But once they understood how much work was involved previously, they've all signed on and love it.

Ages - 2 or 3 in their early 50's. The rest in their 40's (me included at 47) and a few in their 30's, and I think a handful in their 20's. We don't keep a record of DoB, so this is based on my observation of the core 35 odd walkers that turned up over the last season.
I expect we'll never see some that have signed on. A cull is imminent as we want to keep it as an active group.

I'd say that the age group reflects the medium. The younger members tend to be more web-savvy, and perhaps those 55+ just aren't online as much or even know how to look?

As for the group itself - we're not technically a club, and don't plan to be. It's more than just about bushwalking, and we make no apologies for the themes. (It ain't a democracy. We believe if "you don't like it, don't come".) From some of the enquiries we've taken, I get the idea people think a bushwalk is 2km on the path in Kings Park followed by a coffee. Or walking along the cycle track on the cost on a 40 degree day is the go. Perceptions are always an issue ... and I could easily go off on that little tangent.

Who are we? http://www.meetup.com/redtail-bushwalkers/ Say g'day if you're heading to Perth.
[Mod - feel free to add us to your list]

[Bush Walker]

Our group was created using social media, specifically Meetup..... so I took it to meetup and never looked back.

Congratulations Redtail on finding a solution which works well for you and which is one many other groups could use. Bushwalk Australia provides private/public forums which could be used in a similar way by groups.

... listed with themes to deter the "undesirables"

How do themes work?
[quote]Who are we? http://www.meetup.com/redtail-bushwalkers/ Say g'day if you're heading to Perth.
Thanks for the offer
Redtail if you want to introduce your Club there is a special sub forum (Who are you?) to do that.

[Redtail]

Our group was created using social media, specifically Meetup..... so I took it to meetup and never looked back.

Congratulations Redtail on finding a solution which works well for you and which is one many other groups could use. Bushwalk Australia provides private/public forums which could be used in a similar way by groups.

Thanks.
I've had a look around, and can't see where clubs are introduced. Is it the same section as personal intros?

... listed with themes to deter the "undesirables"

How do themes work?

Themes are used within the Meetup site to help people find others with similar interests. Pretty much like a tag, key or search word.
The obvious one in this case is 'bushwalking', and we added 'Natural History', 'Hiking' and so on. And then a whole bunch more to narrow it down a bit, for reasons I'll explain in a separate post.

Who are we? http://www.meetup.com/redtail-bushwalkers/ Say g'day if you're heading to Perth.

Thanks for the offer
Redtail if you want to introduce your Club there is a special sub forum (Who are you?) to do that.

Ah, looks like you just answered my question above. I assumed that was for personal intros. Thanks again.

[Bush Walker]

[
I've had a look around, and can't see where clubs are introduced. Is it the same section as personal intros?

I think I may have mislead you to some extent. This is no special section for Clubs introductions although there has been some discussion about the need for a Clubs sub-forum which could possibly allow this.
My personal introduction includes links to my blog. You could do the same with your Meetup group.

The wiki has a page for links so it could perhaps be added here via a request to the Wiki forum.

[Redtail]

No worries.

Here's my personal take on Meetup.com http://bushwalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8730

I'm a frequent reader of your blog, and often refer others to it.

[Bush Walker]

No worries.

Here's my personal take on Meetup.com http://bushwalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8730

I'm a frequent reader of your blog, and often refer others to it.

Great explanation of MeetUp and its potential.

Re my blog. Thanks.

[rimair]

http://www.facebook.com/melbournebushwalkers

Melbourne Bushwalkers can be found on Facebook at the above link. Complementing our existing newsletter, email and web site, the Facebook Page is intended as an additional way to communicate with and receive feedback from members and non-members on items of interest to the club and bushwalkers more generally. The website and newsletter remain our main sources of (static) information for walkers with brief descriptions of all activities and a member-driven photogallery, but no public discussion forum. We tried running a forum a few years ago but found little member / non-member interest and no club champion. Since then social media have become much more widespread. Our Facebook Page is in its early stages and will no doubt evolve as we learn more about what members find most useful and interesting.

We do not have any access restrictions on the material on our website, including copies of the newsletter, and find it is increasingly becoming a source of information for groups such as MeetUp to research trip ideas.

[Bush Walker]

Congratulations on your new Facebook page, Melbourne Bushwalkers, which I am sure will improve communication with potential members. How are your Club members using MeetUp?

[rimair]

Hi Bush Walker and thank you for your comment. Whilst some of our members are involved on a personal basis with MeetUp groups as a complementary avenue for bushwalking, the club does not have any structured links. The approach does have some attractions as an extension of our activities but it is a discussion we have yet to have and I have been interested in some of the comments above.

[rimair]

Over two years since my last post on this thread! The bushwalking world has moved on and online communications are increasingly replacing paper newsletters and face-to-face booking systems as a way to run a club. Meetup groups are a growing presence but in an expanding number of cases their "booking" requirements are becoming more like those of established clubs, albeit with an online booking system, as their champions come to grips with the realities of walker safety, participant capability and the behaviour of fickle participants. Facebook has become an important complementary channel of communication with others interested in the art and science of walking in the wild and a way to promote our interests.

For Melbourne Bushwalkers our Facebook Page, with over 400 "Likes" ( https://www.facebook.com/melbournebushwalkers ), is now one of the top sources of links back to our main website. How that translates into club particiapation is difficult to determine as we do not ask visitors how they arrived at our web site - perhaps we should! We are pleased, however, that we are able to contribute to the broader sharing of information about bushwalking in general and the skills and equipment that help to make it more enjoyable. The larger the bushwalking community the more the tracks and facilities we enjoy will be maintained to mutual benefit. Any flow-on to walking with Melbourne Bushwalkers is just an added bonus. Setting up a Meetup group is now being considerred.

We are curious to hear the recent experience of others in communicating through Social Media or organising activitiers via Meetup.